AM2, LGA775, Upgrade time....lets talk

[nukemaster]

Ok computers 3 years old....time to build(upgrade) a new one.....

Since we are at a cross-roads so to speak...
i guess i better go AM2(940) or LGA775...

Just a month or 2 ago i looked at going with a K8N-DL(940 Opteron) and grabbing 2 dual cores for it(just cheap 265's)... I was going to OC this to about 2.2(my 3200 is fine for games... i am just starting to want more speed) or so.... i am more concerned with multi-tasking then anything. I was going to grab 4 gigs of ECC and a GF 7900gt oc to go with it. and re-use my 4 hard drives and 2 dvd burners

But for the hell of it i decided to come here and see what people think...

I will be running this for games/pvr/music/photoshop/3d rendering(3ds max, maya and so on). I start to wonder if 4 cores will go to waste with this? or will i get a good boost..i multi task allot. thus the reason for looking at the dual dual core Opterons.

Please post your comments and help me make up my mind
any board suggestions should have at least 6 sata ports and 2 dual channel IDE for my DVD burners to burn 2 things at ones please(2 ide may be dead....not sure...sata dvd burners?...)

Current System
Athlon64 3200+ (cnps 7000 alcu)
K8V SE-DLX
1 gig DDR 400 (corsair 2 x 512)
Radeon X850pro (modded XT)
Antec Sonata II and 450 watt PSU
2 120gig Seagates - sata
2 250gig WDC's - sata
WinTV PVR 250
SB Audigy 2zs
Maxtor pci sata card (cheap way to get 2 new drives in the future...and via sata sucks thanks to asus bios)

my current options

Opteron 4 cores of glory(for multi tasking/games)
Asus K8N-DL
2 Opteron 265 (oced to 2.2ish with cnps 9500)
4 1gig sticks of DDR 400 ECC
Antec TP 550 (the server one)
6 hard drives (4 from old system)
rest of my old system

AM2 dual core (with cnps 9500)
3800+? (oc as far as it will go)
Asus AM2 board
4 gigs of DDR2 800 (cost permitting)
All my old parts
GF7900GT oc(or ati's closest match)

LGA775 dual core (with cnps 9500)
PD805 OC'ed to 3.4-6?
Some board that will take conroe in the future(help me pick)
4 gigs of DDR2 800 (cost permitting)
old parts
GF7900GT oc(or ati's closest match)

sorry for the long post....

 

[nukemaster]

Bump?
oppsy... can this be moved to Hardware -> General Homebuilt
did not see it when i posted.....

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

I think quad core might be a little ahead of it's time if you go that route. However, if you REALLY, and I mean R E A L L Y multitask it would be beneficial.

It's going to be quite a few months until Conroe, and that'd be quite a wait. I'd worry about you going to AM2 (which is 940 pins, but nothing like Socket 940 nor is it compatible with it). An X2 3800+ will only run as fast as your X1 3200+ in single threaded applications.

I am sticking with my Socket 939 system and going dual-core + sli when the prices come down on those.

So my recommendation: Wow, I have no idea. I don't want to be one of those "wait for Conroe" people, but if your rig can hold out until then, that should be a consideration.

 

[voxel]

Just a month or 2 ago i looked at going with a K8N-DL(940 Opteron) and grabbing 2 dual cores for it(just cheap 275's)... I was going to OC this to about 2.2(my 3200 is fine for games... i am just starting to want more speed) or so....

4 cores are overkill for 95% of home-small-office-type-of-work.

I had a dual 270 rig and it kicked ass when it came to Mental Ray rendering (12 minutes vs. 1+ hour on a HT-enabled P4 3.6Ghz). I was cranking out 200 megs of frames a day. Luckily I have 2TB of spare storage lying around.

However, for everything else it behaved just like a X2 4200/3800 because I rarely used more than 2 threads (if that). I'd get TWO X2s for 2/3rds of the cost of one Dual Opteron.

BTW the 2xx Opterons don't overclock that well and the mobos don't support much in the way of overclocking options. Now if you were building a render farm - I'd recommend the Opterons in a second and tell you to avoid the Xeons unless you want a turbine engine that's slow and hot.

 

[nukemaster]

damn i must have been stoned or something OPTERON 265's ...not 275's half the price.....sorry....no sleep is bad..........

anyone think i could at least get the "265" to 2.0... that would be like my computer in single thread and that would still be fine.... in the end it would be faster with more cpu's to work each program(better multi tasking/games in future...)

Also i remember being told that 1gig of ram was a waste back when i had it on my durron 1000....it was not.....

keep the sugestions coming........

@voxel - so would that mean my video encoding would be like a bad out of hell? i would like that......

 

[BaronMatrix]

Ok computers 3 years old....time to build(upgrade) a new one.....

Since we are at a cross-roads so to speak...
i guess i better go AM2(940) or LGA775...

Just a month or 2 ago i looked at going with a K8N-DL(940 Opteron) and grabbing 2 dual cores for it(just cheap 265's)... I was going to OC this to about 2.2(my 3200 is fine for games... i am just starting to want more speed) or so.... i am more concerned with multi-tasking then anything. I was going to grab 4 gigs of ECC and a GF 7900gt oc to go with it. and re-use my 4 hard drives and 2 dvd burners

But for the hell of it i decided to come here and see what people think...

I will be running this for games/pvr/music/photoshop/3d rendering(3ds max, maya and so on). I start to wonder if 4 cores will go to waste with this? or will i get a good boost..i multi task allot. thus the reason for looking at the dual dual core Opterons.

Please post your comments and help me make up my mind
any board suggestions should have at least 6 sata ports and 2 dual channel IDE for my DVD burners to burn 2 things at ones please(2 ide may be dead....not sure...sata dvd burners?...)

Current System
Athlon64 3200+ (cnps 7000 alcu)
K8V SE-DLX
1 gig DDR 400 (corsair 2 x 512)
Radeon X850pro (modded XT)
Antec Sonata II and 450 watt PSU
2 120gig Seagates - sata
2 250gig WDC's - sata
WinTV PVR 250
SB Audigy 2zs
Maxtor pci sata card (cheap way to get 2 new drives in the future...and via sata sucks thanks to asus bios)

my current options

Opteron 4 cores of glory(for multi tasking/games)
Asus K8N-DL
2 Opteron 265 (oced to 2.2ish with cnps 9500)
4 1gig sticks of DDR 400 ECC
Antec TP 550 (the server one)
6 hard drives (4 from old system)
rest of my old system

AM2 dual core (with cnps 9500)
3800+? (oc as far as it will go)
Asus AM2 board
4 gigs of DDR2 800 (cost permitting)
All my old parts
GF7900GT oc(or ati's closest match)

LGA775 dual core (with cnps 9500)
PD805 OC'ed to 3.4-6?
Some board that will take conroe in the future(help me pick)
4 gigs of DDR2 800 (cost permitting)
old parts
GF7900GT oc(or ati's closest match)

sorry for the long post....

it depends on what you dowith the box. I have a 4400+ and it is more than enough for developing, playing games and leaving 1-2GB of programs loaded at all times. I fyou are just playing games and don't use it for productivity I wouldn't go dual Opteron especially with the premium for ECC RAM.
If AM2 go for a 4800+, the 5000+ is a little better but runs the DDR2 out of spec (lower). The 3800+ will probably OC like a monster since AMD Zone got a 3000+ to 2.8GHz (almost). if you're intothat and DDR2 1066 is still probably less tahn ECC DDR.

 

[pengwin]

just wait out 2 months for conroe then u'll have a better choice of what u want.

 

[theaxemaster]

Definately at least wait a few weeks for the price drops if you give up on the opterons. I'd be really surprised if you saw a benefit of having 4 cores 98% of the time, so I'd go with an AM2 X2 after they get cheaper (soon). I would stay away from that 805, its going to be hit or miss on whether or not you can OC it far enough to make it worth it. An x2 with lotsa cache and some OCing would be pretty good.

 

[hiddendog]

Wait & see. Your answer will be come out after 2 months later.

 

[nukemaster]

that fx5000 looks to hit a sweet spot....but would still be about the same price as the quad opteron.......must wait for price cuts.....
any info on 4X4? how soon?


Urge to spend...Rising....(like Simpsons)

 

[jaguarskx]

that fx5000 looks to hit a sweet spot....but would still be about the same price as the quad opteron.......must wait for price cuts.....
any info on 4X4? how soon?


Urge to spend...Rising....(like Simpsons)

Anandtech's Computex 2006 article:

Interestingly enough, despite AMD's recent announcement of its new 4x4 platform none of the motherboard manufacturers we spoke to had heard of it, much less had a design ready to go. We definitely got the impression that 4x4 was a last minute effort to compete with Conroe on the high end.

Second to last paragraph.

Do'h!!!.....(like Simpsons)

 

[nukemaster]

True.....but 4 cores will still be a good future bet...even if it is a last minute idea....

conroe is intels answer to 3 years of amd ass whoopin.....

I will still go either way...and the price war is good for me....just want to know what ppl in here think.....

you know of a good board to get if i go conroe? (have not had an intel in 4 computers)

 

[voxel]

@voxel - so would that mean my video encoding would be like a bad out of hell? i would like that......

4 cores will wipe the floor on any dual-core, but with the ASUS motherboard you'll need 4 sticks of 1GB ECC to get 1T/Dual-channel/NUMA support. Each Opteron CPU has it's own "bank" of memory on that mobo and hence the need for two sticks for dual-channel support.

ECC RAM is kinda pricey too (but absolutely necessary for servers). You only need 3GB of RAM for 99% of real-work and that's what I have on my two current systems. 4GB is overkill for non-server work on a 32-bit OS.

And forget about a useful non-server 64-bit OS. Windows XP64 suck hard - what's with the half-and-half 32-bit/64-bit support? (i.e two versions of IE and two "System" and "Program Files" directories).

The sucky part of about the ASUS board is: single gigabit and single PCIe slot. The 940 sockets are kinda close together too... PCI-X, dual gigabit, dual PCIe would have been great, but a lot of $$$$$.

Let me repeat: 4-cores will wipe the floor of any dual-core. However the downside is that you might not have enough work to feed your machines. My global illumination renders were finishing so quickly I had to feed my baby render farm from work.

I'd buy a kick-ass dual-core workstation and buy a cheapo box (with built-in graphics and fast networking) to offline video encoding and rendering later.

 

[nukemaster]

i have it all priced out with "Cheap" ECC (cas 3 4 sticks of corsair)

you have a point.... i could just use the cheapest pile of crap to encode(fast CPU with ob sound and all that....) and just let it run.....hmmmmmm my Durron 1000 still works good....but too slow to render.....

On the topic

4 cores will wipe the floor on any dual-core, but with the ASUS motherboard you'll need 4 sticks of 1GB ECC to get 1T/Dual-channel/NUMA support. Each Opteron CPU has it's own "bank" of memory on that mobo and hence the need for two sticks for dual-channel support.

Covered.... need 4 sticks for dual channel(2 per cpu and NUMA goodness).....

ECC RAM is kinda pricey too (but absolutely necessary for servers). You only need 3GB of RAM for 99% of real-work and that's what I have on my two current systems. 4GB is overkill for non-server work on a 32-bit OS.

they told me that about 1gig on a Durron 1000 (i put it to use)

Hell i just caught COH(city if heroes/villains) sucking 1.4 gigs of page file and over 700 megs of ram... photoshop eats ram for breakfast....i think i would use it .

4 gigs is a must, no matter what i do....

And forget about a useful non-server 64-bit OS. Windows XP64 suck hard - what's with the half-and-half 32-bit/64-bit support? (i.e two versions of IE and two "System" and "Program Files" directories).

Been there....it sucked....32 bit is fine for me....until the get 64 bit fixed up....

The sucky part of about the ASUS board is: single gigabit and single PCIe slot. The 940 sockets are kinda close together too... PCI-X, dual gigabit, dual PCIe would have been great, but a lot of $$$$$.

I do agree that the board is a little limited....after all i would have to give up my dual slot cooler for video...or my tv card(maybe usb would work.....but i doubt it will be as fast...)....
I can get 2 9500's(Zalman) and if it get the psu too hot...hello Antec P180(the black one)

Single GB lan is good for me as i don't have a gigabit switch...maybe if i go dual core(AM2 or 939) i can afford one

There is no PCI-X(sucks....but thats life)

I do not see a use for SLI(that wont help my in photoshop....and single cards get so fast that games are all cool.....you know how much Wolf Et i play...lol gf 4 does it fine.....but i would like a boost in Doom3/Quake4)

I saw a Tyan one but it did not have NUMA and got killed by this

Let me repeat: 4-cores will wipe the floor of any dual-core. However the downside is that you might not have enough work to feed your machines. My global illumination renders were finishing so quickly I had to feed my baby render farm from work.

no more rendering over night!!!

I'd buy a kick-ass dual-core workstation and buy a cheapo box (with built-in graphics and fast networking) to offline video encoding and rendering later.

Good Point.....at current i run 4 computers....i don't know where to put more.....

@ voxel - thanks for all the info....gave me allot to think about....